Art School admission 2017

Replies to: Art School admission 2017

Hello. I have been reading this thread with great appreciation. So full of information. Thank you!

My 17 years old son has decided... well... gulp... three months ago that he will apply to design program. He is interested in animation, visual communication for primary choices, and industrial design as his second choice of field. He had taken one art class in a freshman year, two digital design classes in sophomore and junior, summer intensive media design class during the summer, and currently in video production.

The problem is.... since he did not think he would apply to design major, he did not save the original digital files of his junior year digital design work at the end of junior year. We contacted his teacher, and she could find his powerpoint slides of his final presentation, which contains some of his work during the Junior year. However, they are mostly in a very small file size, around 100 to 200kb. He also cannot locate in his hard drive his design work and typography that he did this summer... (Talking about disorganization, and this must be discussed in another thread...) Furthermore, he does not have any of observational drawing in his portfolio. Since my background is also fine art, for the last one month (and until the end of December), he has been trying to finish three observational drawing. (1. his foot (almost done), 2, still life drawing in colored pencils, (still probably 50 more hours to go), and 3. figure pencil drawing of his younger brother (still probably at least 20 hours to go, but this one will be done from a photograph, after three hours of actual observational drawing.) I am teaching him how to draw.

Here are my questions... if you could help me....

Q1: He needs to prepare for his portfolios to only two schools, as he is mostly applying to liberal art colleges with strong design program, and most of them do not require any portfolios. Both schools require 10 images, plus one school requires an additional two special projects. Since his primary artistic tool is digital design, he is planning to do his work by photoshop, illustrator, etc, to create visual design.

i), Assume that he can complete three figure drawings in time, he only needs minimum of 7 additional artwork. He has about 5 to 7 digital design projects that he did while in Junior year at school. However, his digital design work is obviously mostly from school's assignments, so in a way... while it may show his sensitivity to color and details, in my opinion, it does not reveal his personality too much . When your son and daughter were walking on the portfolio, did they have some kind of "theme" (emotions, nature, social issues, family, etc.) that they came up with, and did they build their portfolio around it?

ii), How long did your child need to spend their time on documenting their work (taking photographs, digitizing it, anr organize the images?) If it is a 2D surface drawing, how did they document it?

Q2: Do you know any online sources which could possibly critique my son's body of work? I know one teacher in RISD has a business like that, and I am thinking of reaching out to her, but I just wonder if you know any other professionals who would do online portfolio critique. I feel I can tell more about the basic quality of his work from more technical point of view, but I am not sure if I know what makes the portolio "stand out".

@YosemiteWilderness my D did not have a theme, but many admissions people suggested she include work that was done outside of school assignments. If he is applying to specific schools, it might be useful to contact the admissions departments and ask a few questions about what they are looking for in student submissions.

How long did your child need to spend their time on documenting their work (taking photographs, digitizing it, and organize the images?) If it is a 2D surface drawing, how did they document it?

Digitally documenting our work is a *big* deal at my university. It is a significant part of our grade for each project, and they absolutely are draconian (in a good way) about making sure you have good digital images in a place where they can be viewed by the professors. If your kid isn't already good at this, it's an important skill to develop.

Thank you very much for letting me know about MCAD online critique. I did not know about it. Thank you also about the youtube link about how to document your work!

We sat down today, analyzing how many hours are available for him to use for his preparation of portfolio, how many more hours he would need to spend on each missed amount of work, and he was stressed, but he is ready to work on some more projects.

Thank you MotherofDragons, for warning us about how important it is to document one's work. I will keep it in my mind. He already has one drawing done. (All other works are digital art, so we already have files.) And maybe.... we will test and see how documentation will come out with it, so we learn how long it may take to do a VERY GOOD documentation.

@lsichitiu yes, CalArts has slideroom... that was the killer. 16 drawings from life (from models, interior spaces, perspective outside dwellings, etc) then 20 -25 work samples, character sketches and story ideas (this was specific to character animation). Taking pictures of everything, then deciding what to put in, and then editing, and then the video essay... I think it was (not kidding) 15 hours of work. If you count all the work of her sketchbook and the actua drawings.... hundreds. She's doing her last "big" school right now. SVA.... then she will be able to breath a little and focus on the secondary schools.

@Isichitiu sorry forgot about MCAD. My D15 submitted right before Thanksgiving and got a response pretty quickly by e-mail. At that time there were rolling admissions up to the EA deadline. The packet followed about 2 weeks later and included merit aid and laptop scholarship.

@JBStillFlying2 Thank you for the info. I am stressing. I saw online that KCAI status said admitted, but no letter or email from them. The other schools say that they do not post online their decisions, so we have to wait. She ended up not applying to MCAD, she feels it would not be a good fit. Her dream school is SAIC. I would not mind Pratt , VCU, or Cooper either. She applied RD for Cooper, so that app is not even finished yet, so I should not get anxious, but the wait is so hard!

@Isichitiu our friends with kids going to regular colleges couldn't believe the art school deadlines. Suffice to say if you are going that route you are just on a different application schedule. But it all comes together in the end and everyone has the same 5/1 enrollment date.

Isichitiu, good luck. D attends VCUARTS is in AFO and loves it. Prior she spent a year during high school attending
Coopers prestigious outreach and summer intensive. All I can say is she is SO SO happy she did not attend cooper.
VCUARTS couldn't have worked out better. Good luck.

Helpful Links

About College Confidential

Welcome to the leading college-bound community on the Web!

Here you'll find hundreds of pages of articles about choosing a college, getting into the college you want, how to pay for it, and much more. You'll also find the Web's busiest discussion community related to college admissions, and our CampusVibe section!